Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thrillers) Read online

  He handed me my camera’s SD card. “Eric’s response is on the card. Read it on only on your computer, it’s encrypted.”

  I returned to my room, inserted the card into my laptop, and waited for the decryption. After fourteen seconds, Eric’s message appeared on the screen:

  Ali Akbar Kamrani works in an office known to be used as a front for VEVAK. That office does regular banking activities as well. Therefore, it is possible that Ali Akbar is a VEVAK agent. Regarding the withdrawal slip from Sepah Bank in Italy you found in André’s apartment, we’re trying to establish a connection to the bank’s activities, which were a subject of the Treasury Department’s attention. The bank was financing projects to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The bank was established with money from Iran’s military pension fund. Sepah is ‘military’ in Farsi. The Italian branch was used for suspect transactions. It’s likely that Gerda Ehlen, aka Monica, although technically employed by Shestakov, is working in cooperation with or even for VEVAK to defeat efforts to expose illegal Iranian transactions, including taking aggressive measures against those perceived as key opposition players. Wait for further instructions. Eric.

  I deleted his message.

  That wasn’t breaking or heartbreaking news. The possibility that Ali Akbar was a VEVAK agent was real, and I took it seriously. I was still wondering about the meaning of the enigmatic note attached to the euros I’d found.

  “What’s Pension 1?” I asked aloud. I had no clue.

  Only later did I realize that the answer was right in front of me.

  I spent the whole day between the pool and my room, waiting for instructions. In the evening, I ordered room service and watched old Western movies. That’s one of the many things you never see in Bond movies, or any “spy” movie or thriller for that matter—the waiting that we, the employees of a huge bureaucratic machine, have to do, the reports we have to write, the rules we must obey, and the frustration we endure when we hit a brick wall when we’d thought there was a breakthrough.

  The following morning, the phone rang early. The caller spoke French, quickly using a predetermined code word to identify himself and giving me a nonsense message about a pending electronic parts delivery to Italy. He then asked about the view from my room. That was enough. I packed my bags and asked for another room.

  “I want a room with a better view,” I said. Although I must have been known to the hotel’s staff as “the room switcher,” they gave me another room. Obviously, under the new circumstances, staying in the same room for too long was dangerous. I didn’t know who had visited it while I was away, or what devices might have been installed.

  I left the hotel and went out for lunch at a restaurant praised by a popular website. The meal was mediocre, and I hailed a cab to return the hotel.

  A few minutes later, I looked out the window and saw a sign for Mamzer Park. “Sir,” I said to the cabbie, “I need to go to the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I think you just passed it.”

  He didn’t answer and increased his speed. That was enough for me. I pulled out my gun and stuck it in his neck. “Stop or I shoot.” He pulled over and stopped the car. I jumped out, continuing to point my gun at him. “Get out!” The street was flanked by glittering high-rises and the traffic was sparse.

  Shaking, he came out. He was a man in his midfifties, his face deeply grooved. He wore a traditional, but very worn, tunic. Dubai had a large underclass, but the powers that be did their best to keep them hidden, on the outskirts of town—or in the drivers’ seats of old cabs.

  The man looked completely baffled.

  “Who sent you?”

  He lowered his eyes and begged, nearly crying. “Please, sir, I have a wife and six children, I don’t earn much, you can take it all.” He sent his hand to his pocket.

  “Stop right there or I shoot,” I said, “and take your hand out of your pocket slowly.”

  He did. I reached into his pocket; it had only a wallet. I pulled out his driver’s license and put it in my pocket. I threw his wallet to the back seat. I searched his other pockets. They were empty.

  “Who sent you?” I repeated, and when he didn’t answer, I came closer and gestured toward his face with the gun. That made him open his mouth, “I don’t know, Sahib, a man asked me to bring you to Mamzer Park, please don’t hurt me.”

  “Who’s this man?”

  “I never met him before, he hired me in the street, pointed at you when he saw you leaving the restaurant, and told me to pick you up.”

  “Get back in the car!” I ordered him.

  “Please don’t kill me, I swear on Allah that I told you the truth.”

  “Get in!” I ordered again.

  He got behind the wheel, and I got into the back seat. “How far is the park?”

  “Another two kilometers, sir,” he said, shaking.

  “Take me there!” I ordered, “Stop one hundred meters before the main entrance.”

  Three minutes later I saw the park approaching. “Stop here,” I said. He stopped immediately. I jumped out, and asked him, “Do you have a cell phone?” I didn’t want him to report to any potential FOE what has just happened.

  “No, sir.” He was still shaking.

  “Do you have a radio in the car?”

  “Radio? You mean music, yes, yes.”

  “No, I mean a two-way radio, like Motorola?”

  “No, sir.”

  I looked at the cab. It had no antenna. I gave a quick look at the front seat and couldn’t see a radio or a cell phone.

  “OK, make a U-turn and go back. I don’t want to see you here.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned his cab around sharply, and sped away.

  I crossed the street and walked slowly toward the park. It was at the border of Dubai and Sharjah. I was sure there would be a welcome party for me. I was ready.

  The park turned out to be a beach resort with rental chalets; a swimming pool edged by a symmetrical line of tall, thin palms; and a cafeteria. I paid five dirhams to enter and walked around the fence toward the pool. The white cement of the ground shone hot in the sun. There were just a few people in the water. The welcome party I was expecting wasn’t there. Did the cabbie manage to warn them I was carrying a gun?

  I sat on a chair, ordered iced tea, and waited. Unlike in France, waiting in Dubai didn’t involve a long lunch in a café; it involved sitting poolside in yet another sun-blasted resort area. Ten minutes later, just as the waiter brought my drink, two men approached me. They were well-built Arab men in their midtwenties. I was blinded by the sun, and put my hand above my eyes for some relief.

  “Mr. Van der Hoff?”

  “Who’s asking?” I said with my other hand in my pocket, feeling the gun. Shooting them from this angle, with me seated, would be difficult. I stood up.

  “We hear you’re snooping around, and we don’t like it.”

  I didn’t answer. Thugs never understand unless I “explain” it to them with a gun. No matter which country, I run into tough guys like this. And no matter what their ethnicity, religion, country of origin—no matter what, I can count on one thing.

  Thugs are dumb.

  “Did you hear me?” said the taller man, trying hard to perfect an icy-threatening tone.

  “I heard you,” I said, and took a step back, trying to figure out which one to shoot first if things got ugly. I needed some distance to hit them both.

  “People complain that American agents are looking for people doing business with Iran. What you’re doing is bad for business, so get out of Dubai immediately, wild il qahbaa.”

  That “son of a bitch” curse was said in a North African Arab accent.

  “Are you representing the Dubai Chamber of Commerce?” I released the safety on my gun, still nestled in my pocket.

  They looked at each other, each trying to see if the other thug understood me. One of them settled on repeating their line. “We told you to get out.”

  “That’s why I asked if you work for th
e local Chamber of Commerce. You said I was interfering with business, when in fact I came to do business.”

  “You have one day,” said the tall man. They turned around, retreating into the white-hot streets of Dubai. I continued to sip my drink. Who sent them? They could’ve been representatives of several hostile bodies: VEVAK, rival companies wanting to block my purported but nonexistent business efforts, or even corrupt local police paid by someone to get me out of Dubai. I returned to my hotel and e-mailed Eric about the latest developments.

  An hour later his response came in: Leave. You have no further business in Dubai that’s worth the risk.

  That order flew against my best judgment, not to mention my defiant character. Funny, I always seem to become especially defiant when my life is threatened. Going home would be a bad move. Staying, I felt, I could expose who these people were, and who sent them.

  As I cooled off, though, I saw the logic behind Eric’s order. My job was to identify the scientist who wanted to defect. Nothing more, nothing less. And as far as the threats, they come with the territory of my real job. They had nothing to do with my legend as a trader. But that was a ploy, not the real thing, so why continue with the charade when I had no intention of playing for very long anyway?

  I called my contact at the US Consulate for a representative to meet me at my hotel. In the lobby of the men’s room, I gave him my gun. I returned to my room, packed my bag, checked out of the hotel, and dropped in a mailbox the cabbie’s driver’s license. I let two cabs pass and took the third cab that stopped. I went to the airport, and, two hours later, I was airborne. Destination: New York.

  X

  January 2007, Manhattan

  Was my mission a success? I’d identified the sender of the letter and the scientist who purportedly wanted to defect, but failed to verify either the sender’s bona fides or that of his alleged scientist brother. I was also exposed to FOE. That could hardly be called a success. Nonetheless, the results so far were worth the risk. I was curious to see how Eric would manage the answers I brought, and if he’d even bother to share his conclusions with me. I taxied home from the airport and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  I woke up to the annoying ringing telephone. I heard Eric’s voice. “Read my message.” His voice was stern and I was half asleep. I wiped my eyes and looked at the clock on the night table. It was 3:45 a.m. I turned my computer on and read Eric’s message:

  Firouz Kamrani, an Iranian scientist, died last night of unnatural causes. Iranian media reported the cause of his death as ‘gas suffocation in his sleep caused by fumes from a faulty gas fire.’ Leaked information suggested that the actual cause of his death was radioactive poisoning. We are still collecting intelligence. Anything we need to know that was not included in your reports? Eric.

  What the hell? How did VEVAK get Firouz Kamrani so fast, or did they? I turned off the light and returned to bed, lying on my back. It was a cold winter in Iran now, therefore the use of gas heating was expected. However, if he died at home, then did he really have radioactive material at home? Unlikely. You don’t keep this in your refrigerator and mistake it for a beer.

  Hey, my inner little devil broke in, as if he hadn’t been dormant for some time, what if he died from radioactive poisoning elsewhere and was then brought home, or it is also possible that for once in a millennium the Iranians are telling the truth and he died at home of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning?

  I lay in bed, piecing it together.

  “No,” I told my little devil, “I need more information, but, as a hunch, I tend to think that the Iranian security services killed Kamrani. Maybe they suspected him of trying to defect to escape the role he was playing for them. His purported brother was their agent; I had no doubt of that. But if VEVAK killed Kamrani, why didn’t they use the opportunity to blame the CIA, Mossad, or both for the killing, particularly after my meeting with Ali Akbar, the ‘brother’? Maybe fearing that if they accused any foreign intelligence service, it’d send a message that the CIA and Mossad could operate within Iran with impunity: an unthinkable move in a country where pride and honor are more important than life.”

  I went back to sleep.

  Another phone call woke me up again. “Get ready,” said Eric, “I’m sending a car pick you up in thirty minutes.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “A meeting in Georgetown.”

  A car-service limo with tinted windows veered over to the curb. The uniformed driver got out, approached me, and said “Oasis,” the code word identifying him as an Agency operative. I answered, “River.” The driver opened the door for me and I got in. I slept most of way.

  In Washington, DC, he pulled up at a brick town house on Olive and 29th Streets in Georgetown, Washington’s oldest neighborhood at 250 years and counting—which, compared to where I was from, and where I had been, to me seemed like the blink of an eye. Inside the townhouse were Eric, Paul, and Benny. Benny’s presence was a pleasant surprise.

  After reviewing the details of my encounters in Dubai, it was time to hear whether there were any developments.

  “We’re still gathering intelligence,” said Eric, “but word gets around quickly. Kamrani’s death was announced by Iranian television days after the fact. They described the cause of death as ‘gas poisoning.’”

  “Did they discover his defection plans, if there were any?” I asked.

  “Highly likely,” said Paul, “We are sure now, based on intelligence from other sources, that he wanted to defect. We are also sure now that Ali Akbar wasn’t his brother. VEVAK had concocted a plan to kill Kamrani and blame it on us, saying we killed him after he refused to spy for us. They killed him, but the blaming part was discarded, they had second thoughts about that.”

  “Wasn’t he very important to the Iranians? Why kill him?” I asked.

  “He was previously the brain behind the Isfahan plant that produces uranium-hexafluoride gas, an ingredient in the enrichment of uranium at the Natanz facility, and they realized he in fact wanted to leave. The Iranians just couldn’t let him get out of Iran alive. However, we can’t rule out assassination by other foreign intelligence services, or even an accident.”

  But if it wasn’t the Iranians or an accident, that means the Iranians would be shitting in their pants because someone flattened their key nuclear scientist. The others are probably writing their wills, my little inner devil suggested. If the Agency was involved, but neither Paul nor Eric shared that information with you, then somebody was doing overtime.

  Kamrani was a worthy target. The fact that the Iranians announced his death only a few days afterward must have been for a good reason. I wish I knew what it was. It certainly wasn’t because the Iranians found him dead several days after he’d supposedly died at home. A nuclear scientist in Iran cannot just disappear without half the Iranian security force looking for him, likely even within an hour after his failing to show up for work. My inquisitive mind went further: did the delayed announcement mean that the Iranians were not involved, and in fact were waiting to see who left Iran in a hurry? Did they discount the possibility that local assassins retained by a foreign intelligence agency did the job, and that they need not leave Iran?

  On the other hand, I thought back to when I practiced law, was there proof that the cause of death was in fact assassination? Maybe it was an accident? Even people whom the world wants dead might fall victim to real, not staged, accidents. I had to stop speculating. It was taking me nowhere.

  Eric turned to Paul. “By the way, I read your status memo. You know you left out an important detail.” His tone was gruff.

  Paul looked surprised. “What?”

  “Kamrani was recently employed by Isfahan’s Malik Ashtar University of Technology. Several departments of that institution have been quietly involved in Iran’s secret nuclear program. His boss was University Rector Mahdi Najad Nuri, also a general in the Revolutionary Guard,” said Eric abruptly.

  “And what’s so wr
ong with a general getting an education?” asked Paul.

  Eric, ever humorless, didn’t get it. “What’s so wrong is that Mahdi Najad Nuri is on a UN Security Council list of people and institutions whose activity is being monitored for alleged contact with Tehran’s nuclear program. The Nuclear Technology Center of Isfahan is a nuclear research facility that currently operates four small nuclear research reactors, all supplied by China. The uranium conversion facility at Isfahan converts yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas, which is then enriched by thousands of centrifuges.

  “As of late October 2006, the site was almost fully operational, with twenty-one or even all of twenty-four workshops completed. There is also a zirconium production plant located nearby that produces the necessary ingredients and alloys for nuclear reactors.”

  “So do you think the death of one scientist, as senior as one could be, would put off Iran from developing nuclear weapons?” I asked, sounding doubtful, because I was.

  “It sends a message, although not by us,” said Eric. “Let the ground shake under their scientists’ feet. Let them fear the unknown. These deaths increase the ‘white desertion’ of scientists. They either continue working but their minds are elsewhere, or they resign and move to less dangerous jobs. But the Iranian regime doesn’t let them off the hook that easily. In fact, some of these scientists find themselves between a rock and a hard place.